In recent decades there as been a rise in scholarship debating liberalism as a potential threat to multiculturalism. Cultural plurality and moral demand for it to be recognised and respected after centuries of oppression has led modern liberal societies to face criticism that they are philosophically unequipped to cater for marginalised community rights. This criticism is based on the idea of liberalism as liberty, rather than its true concern with certain liberties that advocate equal concern. There is not much philosophical work specifically concerning the topic of cultural appropriation, but it is an issue that is torn between broader study on freedom of expression, systematic oppression, and multiculturalism. Identifying the harm wrought from inoffensive cultural appropriation with the action itself would be a fallacy. A liberal society would condone reasonably inoffensive cultural appropriation, but not the social marginalisation that gives it the power to cause harm.
The majority of attacks on liberalism as a threat to multiculturalism arise from debates about its definition. A common understanding is that liberalism is a theory of liberty. This interpretation is simply not plausible, as such a conclusion would posit “equality and liberty [as] rivals for our moral allegiance” (1). If liberty were the fundamental value, then every person should have the freedom to do whatever they please in accordance with it, even if the exercise of their freedom restricted the freedom of others. Clearly, such a paradox is not sustainable. Upon further investigation it becomes clear that the majority of philosophical liberal theories are founded in value for equality or mutual advantage, with protection of certain liberties being the means of achieving it. The criteria different liberal theories employ to determine which liberties should be defended varies, but always aims to distinguish which of them identify the interests of human beings as matters of equal and fair concern. Cultural appropriation is the “taking of something produced by members of one culture by members of another” (2), and certainly poses a practical challenge to any liberal theory as it deals with many interests of a vast array of individuals and groups. If equal and fair concern is what is being sought, then the liberties any such liberal theory would endeavour to protect would be those that do not deny any person the respect and concern they are entitled to as human beings of equal standing.
In order to determine whether liberalism condones cultural appropriation one must first determine exactly what harm it can cause, and if such harm infringes upon anyone’s rights. One major reason for objecting to cultural appropriation is that it can offend those from the culture it appropriates, and offence can cause harm. Joel Feinberg, a political and legal philosopher, wrote extensively on what place the justice system has in preventing offence. He makes an important distinction for non-harmful wrongs and non-wrongful harms; set backs to interests that do not cause harm and harms that do not set back interests (3) are not matters of justice. Generic offence tends to fall under these terms, or is otherwise a fleeting negative emotional experience that does not cause harm nor wrong anyone — clearly not the concern of liberalism.
“[…] no matter how the harm principle is mediated, it will not certify as legitimate those interferences with the liberty of some citizens that are made for the sole purpose of preventing such unpleasant states in others.” (4)
He expresses here the sentiment that liberties should not be restricted solely to protect against generic harms. This also happens to be the sentiment that causes some debate about cultural appropriation — does one’s liberty to not be offended ever outweigh the liberty to express oneself, even if the expression is appropriative? Professor James O. Young is one of few academics who have written philosophically about cultural appropriation, and employs Feinberg’s theory of profound offence to discuss which appropriative acts ought to be mediated from a moral perspective. He outlines a number of criteria that can cause offence to affect the appropriated in a way that “strike[s] at a person’s core values or sense of self”: objective offensiveness; misrepresentation; intention to cause harm; failure to acknowledge sourced cultural material; respectful conduct; discretion of exposure; and extent of toleration (5). Yet even if one is profoundly offended by appropriation, Young still expresses doubt that such offence is even often reasonable, or if it can truly set back the interests of any individual.
“[…] a great deal of [cultural] appropriation is completely benign. Most cultural appropriation neither sets back the interests of individual members of cultures nor damages cultures [and] reflection will reveal that the reasons one might have for thinking that offensive acts of [cultural] appropriation are wrong are almost always defeasible.” (6)
It is not the intent of this paper to outline how often or likely it is that cultural appropriation would have detrimental effect on the interests of an individual or culture. Examining this scholarship does, however, make it clear that theoretically, if an act of cultural appropriation could be proven to be profoundly offensive in a way that harmfully denied one’s fair interest in equality or mutual advantage, it would then not be condoned by a liberal society.
Some philosophers, academics and commentators express concern that this is a limited perspective; that is, the assessment may be fair but it ignores the harm that cultural appropriation can cause systemically. Another philosophical professor, Erich Hatala Matthes, uses scholarship on dominating speech and epistemic injustice to draw parallels with the nature of cultural appropriation. He begins by pointing out that cultural appropriation is only evidenced as offensive when something from a marginalised culture is appropriated by a member of a dominant one (7) — patently there is a relevant power dynamic that is has not yet been adequately addressed in discussions of harmful offence. Dominating speech is the idea that the preconceptions a listener has can hinder a speaker’s ability to effectively communicate; a marginalised speaker may experience “a credibility deficit owning to identity prejudice in the hearer” (8). If appropriation is a form of
expression then it is also a form of speech even if it is non-verbal, and can be dominating in that way that verbal speech also can. Appropriation by dominant cultures can reinforce this credibility deficit by increasing their own “credibility excess” (9), in assuming one has more understanding or wisdom than their experience epistemically warrants compared to a speaker from the culture they appropriate. In this way, cultural appropriation in the form of dominating speech can be a great epistemic injustice and, intentionally or not, oppress individuals. An interesting quote in ‘Problematising the Issue of Cultural Appropriation’ aligns this train of thought with what seems to be a Sartrean insight:
“The 'right' to use the voice of the Other has, however, been bought at great price — the silencing of the Other; it is, in fact, neatly posited on that very silencing.” (10)
This existential opinion would further the status of dominating speech and epistemic injustice to the point of being quite heinous. Silencing another person in such a way would strip them of their ability to have meaning in the world (11). If cultural appropriation really does cause harm to anywhere near this extent, this is profound offence that is not addressed through the micro perspective. It seems inarguable that liberal society would deem it absolutely in direct conflict with an individual’s equal right to respect and concern and would seek to eradicate it.
If true, such an argument appears to be indisputable. Yet, there is a core problem; identifying the harm produced by cultural appropriation as also caused by it would be a fallacy. As aforementioned, Matthes points out that cultural appropriation can only be offensive if it abuses a power dynamic.
“No reasonable person thinks that, for instance, an indigenous person does something wrong by employing some Western […] style.” (12)
The act is not offensive in and of itself; it is offensive when it interacts with pre-existing social injustices. It does not stand to reason to ostracise the thing without an inherent offensive nature to remove offence, particularly when what has the power to make it offensive is addressable. Matthes recognises this, although he does not suggest its power to refute as fallacy conclusions of cultural appropriation denying one’s liberty to be respected.
“[…] identifying the proximate cause of a certain harm might take a back seat when we have the harm itself (credibility deficit) and its ultimate cause (social marginalisation) clearly in view.” (13)
The practical concern such an issue highlights reflects its false conclusion. If a society banned or penalised all acts of cultural appropriation to promote equal right to be respected, it would be unnecessarily oppressive because it would strip the liberty of marginalised groups to express themselves through inoffensive appropriation without the same justification of protecting other liberties. On the other hand, if a society only banned or penalised acts of profoundly offensive cultural appropriation, that is, appropriation by members of a dominant society, it would exclude the dominant culture from some forms of expression but not the marginalised ones. The outcome is not entirely unlike the effect of dominant speech in manipulating credibility balances; so the liberty that liberalism would protect in the event of epistemic injustice becomes confused.
Discussions of cultural appropriation in terms of dominance also run the risk of cultural essentialism which results in similar harms caused by the appropriation it objects to. Naturally, in defining a cultural issue such as appropriation, it is important to have some sort of distinction between who is part of the marginalised culture and who is not; “the concept of cultural appropriation has no application unless insiders and outsiders, members and non-members of a culture can be distinguished” (14). A distinction like this would lead to the conclusion that “[p]eople are […] more or less passive carriers of their culture” (15), which is not the case at all. Mis-framing a group in this way can isolate members who do not identify with all criteria, and this is ironically not unlike the misrepresentative and credibility imbalance issues that arise with cultural appropriation. It is not exactly the same, as the sources of the issues are different — those within essentialism originate from within the cultural group rather than being imposed from without. Cultural essentialism could also challenge the entire concept of cultural appropriation because it questions the nature of culture in the first place.
“Either culture is understood in an ‘essentialist’ way, in which case multiculturalism is empirically and morally flawed; or culture is understood in a non-essentialist way, but then the concept no longer supplies multiculturalism with the means of making the empirical judgements and normative claims that matter to it.” (16)
It has been established that cultural appropriation is not offensive in and of itself, and now it seems that objecting to cultural appropriation presents the same issues it attempts to solve, only found elsewhere. Liberalism becomes confused when the harm is deemed to be the fault of cultural appropriation, but no matter what approach it were to choose in protecting one’s right to equal respect and consideration, it would find itself perpetuating the harm it wishes to remove. The only viable path of action for a liberal society is to focus on the ultimate source of the harm — liberalism would be involved in protecting against the social marginalisation, but reasonably inoffensive cultural appropriation could only be condoned.
A liberal society would not condone any reasonable, profound offence that would harmfully deny one’s fair interest in equality or mutual advantage. It would be an affront to the very foundations of liberalism. When cultural appropriation causes this reasonable, profound offence, liberalism would not condone it. On a micro scale, liberalism’s authority is clear, but on a macro scale the issue becomes more convoluted. Systemically, all cultural appropriation of marginalised group symbols does have the capacity to produce reasonable, profound offence, but it is not caused by cultural appropriation itself. It is caused by overarching social marginalisation — liberalism does not condone this phenomenon, but cannot take issue with reasonably inoffensive cultural appropriation because the act itself is not the ultimate harm that threatens the equality or mutual advantage it is founded on.
S O U R C E S R E F E R E N C E D
1 Kymlicka 2001: 138
2 Young 2005: 136
3 Feinberg 1985: x
4 Feinberg 1985: 1
5 Young 2005: 135-146
6 Young 2010: 127-128
7 Matthes 2016: 347
8 Fricker 2011: 17
9 Fricker 2011: 17
10 Philip 1990: 212
11 Sartre 1969
12 Matthes 2016: 347
13 Matthes 2016: 363-364
14 Young 2005: 136
15 Verkuyten & Brug 2003: 385
16 Patten 2014: 39
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
Egan, J. (2018). Multiculturalism. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/multiculturalism
Feinberg, J. (1985). The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law Volume 2: Offense to Others. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fricker, M. (2011). Epistemic injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hladki, J. (1994). Problematizing The Issue of Cultural Appropriation. Alternate Routes, 11, 95-113.
Kymlicka, W. (2001). Contemporary Political Philosophy. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Matthes, E. (2016). Cultural Appropriation Without Cultural Essentialism?. Social Theory And Practice, 42(2), 343-366. doi: 10.5840/soctheorpract201642219
Opiah, A. (2017). I Don't Want People Asking My Permission to Wear Cornrows. Retrieved from https://www.teenvogue.com/story/why-the-cultural-appropriation-conversation-needs-to-go-further
Patten, A. (2014). Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights. Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wpz34
Phillip, M. (1990). The Disappearing Debate: Racism and Censorship. In L. Scheier, S. Sheard, and E. Wachtel. Language in Her Eye: Views on Writing and Gender by Canadian Women Writing in English (p. 109-219). Toronto: Coach House.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sartre, J. (1969). Being and nothingness : an essay on phenomenological ontology. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Secord, L. (2018). Systemic Injustice: Disagreeing With John Piper. Retrieved from https://www.riverviewbaptist.net/pastor-levis-blog/2018/1/22/systemic-injustice-disagreeing-with-john-piper
Verkuyten, M., & Brug, P. (2004). Multiculturalism and group status: The role of ethnic identification, group essentialism and protestant ethic. European Journal Of Social Psychology, 34(6), 647-661. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.222
Young, J. (2010). Cultural appropriation and the arts. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Young, J. (2005). Profound Offense and Cultural Appropriation. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,63(2), 135-146.
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